Emperor of Peace lives again!

William Drayton, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant, is so wispy that you hold your sneezes in his presence for fear of blowing him away.

Drayton is a do-gooder, but he differs from most modern do-gooders in that he isn't asking for governments to solve nasty social problems. His Arlington, Virginia-headquartered Ashoka: Innovators for the Public turns instead to what he calls "social entrepreneurs," private people willing to put their organizational and entrepreneurial skills to work helping others rather than making money.

He has impeccable academic credentials -- Harvard, Oxford and Yale Law School -- and an insight into how to solve the world's toughest problems -- environmental degradation, poverty, lack of education and health care, exploitation of women and children, and so on. He turns social entrepreneurs loose on them. "A business entrepreneur has exceptional levels of vision, creativity and determination and frequently creates entirely new industries," explains Drayton. "A social entrepreneur has exactly the same qualities, but he -- or she -- devotes them to coming up with new solutions to social problems." He names some well-known examples: Florence Nightingale, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela.

Drayton's insight was that by identifying social entrepreneurs early on, he could support them inexpensively and hugely leverage modest financial outlays into enormous social impact. Like a venture capital outfit, Ashoka looks for people with drive, passion and clearly defined projects. It grants them a smallish stipend that takes care of their living expenses and frees them to devote themselves full time to their dreams. It helps them acquire skills they lack -- how to get their story out, raise funds to carry on the work and expand -- and gives them a worldwide network of like-minded individuals who provide ideas, contacts and fellowship.

"It is arrogant to think that well-meaning outsiders can make a dent in the horrendous social problems besetting every country in the world," says Drayton. "Money is not the answer. We empower social entrepreneurs from the communities and get out of their way. It is amazing how effective they become in finding their own solutions."

Among the entrepreneurs Drayton has backed are Marilena Lazzarini and Josue Rios, cofounders of the Brazilian Institute for Consumer Defense (IDEC). In March 1990 the Brazilian government froze all bank accounts in its bid to fight hyperinflation. The inflation index was arbitrarily changed, and banks applied the new measure retroactively to many accounts.

In short, the government effectively confiscated much of the savings of a huge part of Brazil's growing middle class. Many Brazilians instantly went from middle class to poor. "It was robbery, pure and simple," asserts Marilena Lazzarini. Josue Rios estimates that consumers were rooked out of more than $14 billion. The Institute filed suit against the banks, winning several landmark victories. Its suit against the government on behalf of the cheated depositors is pending.

It was in 1990 that Ashoka's board of directors elected both Marilena and Josue to its Fellowship and granted them living stipends. "Everyone was asking me why I left a good government job to set up an association that was doomed to fail," recalls Marilena. "I was consumed by self- doubt. But the Ashoka stipend not only enabled me to be independent, it bolstered my confidence."

From childhood, Drayton showed entrepreneurial talents and an interest in public affairs. The son of a placer miner and a cellist, he started a newspaper when he was in fourth grade. At Yale Law school in 1967 he started Yale Legislative Services, which mobilized students to provide first-rate analytical and drafting services to legislators that lacked their own staff support. As an assistant administrator for planning and management at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Carter era, he came up with the idea of trading pollution rights as an efficient method of controlling noxious emissions -- using the market rather than government edict to alleviate problems.

Now he is applying his approach toward problem-solving to the whole world. In Brazil another Ashoka Fellow, Leonardo Pessina, has found one solution to the housing shortage in So Paulo, where much of the population lives in shantytowns or on the street. Leonardo gathers dwellers from So Paulo's favelas -- urban slums -- into cooperatives whose members contribute both cash and work to build modest but modern homes.

Each participating family typically provides 80 hours of labor each month, much of it on nights and weekends. The government's chief contribution is land and occasional financing.

The genius of this program lies in the highly original ways Pessina has found to organize groups of unskilled families into units capable of high-quality construction. Each family works on all units, and when construction is complete, homes are allocated with a lottery deciding order of choice. The only cash outlays are for materials and a bit of highly skilled labor. For cooperative members the payoff is a decent home for about half what they would have to pay in the private market -- which few could afford. The Ashoka-seeded organization has constructed more than 3,000 units in the So Paulo area and has served as an adviser to other groups that have put up an additional 40,000 units.

Drayton runs Ashoka like a business; he is an immensely talented organizer. Ashoka sends teams around the world to identify problems and find people who are leading crusades against them. Social workers, clergymen, politicians, bureaucrats, educators and environmental activists are consulted. What are the social problems you face? Can you name someone who has come up with a unique and effective way of trying to solve any of them? Candidates who pass all the screens are invited to make a written detailed application for an Ashoka Fellowship. A country representative -- there are 33 of them, spread from Nepal to Chile -- evaluates these and then makes his recommendations for specific candidates for Ashoka Fellowships and their three-year stipends. These are screened further at several stages.

"We are looking for the Andrew Carnegies and the Steve Jobses of the social arena," says Drayton. "They have to have knockout ideas that can become a new pattern for society as a whole."

Fewer than one in a hundred proposed make it to Fellowship. "At every stage of the selection process, quality is the overriding concern," emphasizes Drayton. "We do not want to help start a new school, but we do want to do everything possible to help someone who is launching a better way of teaching."

Ashoka executives are highly dedicated. Lynn Hamilton, Ashoka's director for the Andean region, camped out for several days in the deepest Amazon, traveling up and down the river by canoe to check out the claim of a candidate to have come up with a new way of restoring severely damaged land in the fragile ecosystem of the region. Her body swelled with welts after she was attacked by hundreds of fleas in Peru.

War stories like these form part of the culture of Ashoka, named after a 3rd-century B.C. Indian emperor who publicly forswore war because of the suffering it causes. If you haven't suffered physically, you haven't done your full measure.

The organization operates on a shoestring. Its operating budget for 1998 is a mere $7.2 million, a third raised by chapters, a third from individual and corporate donors and the balance provided by foundations.

Ashoka Fellows are paid $250 a month in low-cost-of-living countries like Bangladesh and up to $1,500 a month in higher cost-of-living countries like Brazil and Argentina.

The stipends generally end after three years. After that, funding is usually taken over by foundations or government agencies or even by affiliated profitmaking ventures. "We support them till they become independent, and this typically happens in less than three years," says Drayton.

The multiplier effect of these small sums is impressive. In Thailand Somsook Boonyabancha has pioneered "land-sharing" as a way of clearing urban slums created by influxes of rural villagers into urban areas. The slum dwellers are in most cases squatting on land owned by a businessperson. Boonyabancha makes a deal with the owner. If he or she will deed part of the land to the slum dwellers to build on, they will vacate the rest of the land, which can then be commercially developed.

Both parties benefit by avoiding endless court battles complicated by political dealing. The Thai royal family is taking note. Its Bureau of Crown Property owns the land under about a hundred slums and has declared that it will use land-sharing as the basis of all development.

Work has started in several sites. Land-sharing arrangements based on Boonyabancha's model are being looked at in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and India.

More than 900 Ashoka Fellows throughout the world are making life more bearable for the most deprived. Fellows have saved millions of acres of rain forest, brought low-cost electricity to isolated rural villages, released thousands of children from bonded slave labor, created programs for more effective teaching of mathematics and launched a score of human rights initiatives.

With socialism proven to be a dismal failure and government programs creating as many problems as they solve, Ashoka may well be showing us the path to a better world. n Srikumar S. Rao is the Louis and Johanna Vorzimer Professor of Marketing at the C.W. Post campus of New York's Long Island University.